J.Neil Schulman on Gun Laws

Dear Mayor Hammer,

Regarding your proposed February 20, 1997 meeting to discuss ways to prevent violence among our youth.

I'm a well-known author on firearms-related criminology. My books include Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns, and Self Control Not Gun Control. My articles on this subject have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and one of my articles, "Medical Malpractice," originally published in National Review, was selected to appear in the book Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Health and Society, Second, Edition, Edited by Eileen K. Daniel, (Dushkin Publishing Group/Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1996), as rebuttal to "Guns in the Household" by Jerome P. Kassirer, MD, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Any discussion of the use of privately owned firearms in society must take into account benefits as well as costs. I am attaching to this email a link to the World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock, a web page which calculates the number of times each year that a privately held gun is used to prevent a violent crime. The clock calculates a gun defense every 13 seconds, which comes to a total of 2.45 million gun defenses in the course of a year. The web page details the source of this calculation, along with further information comparing these positive outcomes with criminal uses of guns, accidental gun-related fatalities, and suicides in which a gun is used as the method.

In particular, you should note the section of the page referenced as "Kids and Guns," which includes excerpts from a study by the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse," August 1995, which found, "The socialization into gun ownership is also vastly different for legal and illegal gunowners. Those who own legal guns have fathers who own guns for sport and hunting. On the other hand, those who own illegal guns have friends who own illegal guns and are far more likely to be gang members. For legal gunowners, socialization appears to take place in the family; for illegal gunowners, it appears to take place 'on the street.'"

"Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns."

Mayor Hammer, any legislation has to be based on a real-world picture rather than popular myth and junk science. I strongly suggest that if you do not rely on the best available scientific evidence on the question of the positive role firearms play in controlling crime and violence in our society, you will do nothing but throw oil, rather than water, on the problem.

These are serious issues with dire social consequences, and there is no room for political demagoguery. Any political leader who fails to learn these facts will find himself or herself as making public policy not because it is in the best interests of the people, but merely because there is political capital to be made from it.

That sort of incompetence from elected officials is surely effective argument an opponent can use in the next election to appeal to any voters who cast their votes based on reasonable approaches to public problems rather than narrow extremist ideology.

Sincerely,

J. Neil Schulman

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J. Neil Schulman / Pulpless.Com
Voice & Fax: (310) 839-7653
Internet: jneil@pulpless.com
Personal Web Page: http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/

Browse sample chapters of new books by bestselling authors, pay online with a credit card or ecash, then download books in HTMLor Adobe Acrobat format from the web at http://www.pulpless.com/The World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock

The World Wide Web

GUN DEFENSE CLOCK

Every 13 seconds

an American gun owner uses a firearm

in defense against a criminal.

Criminal Attacks Stopped By Guns This Year:

<http://www.pulpless.com/stopower.html>

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Among 15.7% of gun defenders interviewed nationwide during The National Self Defense Survey conducted by Florida State University criminologists in 1994, the defender believed that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection -- a life saved by a privately held gun about once every 1.3 minutes. (In another 14.2% cases, the defender believed someone "probably" would have died if the gun hadn't been used in defense.)

In 83.5% of these successful gun defenses, the attacker either threatened or used force first -- disproving the myth that having a gun available for defense wouldn't make any difference.

In 91.7% of these incidents the defensive use of a gun did not wound or kill the criminal attacker (and the gun defense wouldn't be called "newsworthy" by newspaper or TV news editors). In 64.2% of these gun-defense cases, the police learned of the defense, which means that the media could also find out and report on them if they chose to.

In 73.4% of these gun-defense incidents, the attacker was a stranger to the intended victim. (Defenses against a family member or intimate were rare -- well under 10%.) This disproves the myth that a gun kept for defense will most likely be used against a family member or someone you love.

In over half of these gun defense incidents, the defender was facing two or more attackers -- and three or more attackers in over a quarter of these cases. (No means of defense other than a firearm -- martial arts, pepper spray, or stun guns -- gives a potential victim a decent chance of getting away uninjured when facing multiple attackers.)

In 79.7% of these gun defenses, the defender used a concealable handgun. A quarter of the gun defenses occured in places away from the defender's home.

Source: "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalance and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995

Marvin Wolfgang, Director of the Sellin Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Pennsylvania, considered by many to be the foremost criminologist in the country, wrote in that same issue, "I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of Brave New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police ... What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clearcut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. ...I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence. The National Crime Victim Survey does not directly contravene this latest survey, nor do the Mauser and Hart Studies. ... the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it. ... The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well."

So this data has been peer-reviewed by a top criminologist in this country who was prejudiced in advance against its results, and even he found the scientific evidence overwhelmingly convincing.

By Comparison: A fatal accident involving a firearm occurs in the United States only about once every 6 hours. For victims age 14 or under, it's fewer than one a day -- but still enough for the news media to have a case to tell you about in every day's edition.Source: National Safety Council

A criminal homicide involving a firearm occurs in the United States about once every half hour -- but two-thirds of the fatalities are not completely innocent victims but themselves have criminal records.Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports and Murder Analysis by the Chicago Police Department

Kids and guns? Here's what a 1995 federal study investigating juvenile crime found after looking at 20,000 randomly selected households:

Relationship between type of gun owned and percent committing street, drug and gun crimes.

Illegal gun:

Street crimes = 74% Drug use = 41% Gun crimes = 21%

No gun:

Street crimes = 24% Drug use = 15% Gun crimes = 1%

Legal Gun:

Street crimes = 14% Drug use = 13% Gun crimes = 0%

"The socialization into gun ownership is also vastly different for legal and illegal gunowners. Those who own legal guns have fathers who own guns for sport and hunting. On the other hand, those who own illegal guns have friends who own illegal guns and are far more likely to be gang members. For legal gunowners, socialization appears to take place in the family; for illegal gunowners, it appears to take place 'on the street.'"

"Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns."Source: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse," August 1995.

Making it legally possible for civilians to carry concealed weapons does not make society more violent or result in shootouts at traffic accidents. The rate of criminal misuse of firearms by the hundreds of thousands of persons licensed to carry concealed firearms in Florida is so low as to be statistically zero. In fact, homicide, assault, rape, and robbery are dramatically lower in areas of the United States where the public is allowed easy access to carrying concealed firearms in public.

Sources: Florida Department of State, Concealed Weapons/ Firearms License Statistical Report and <http://law.lib.uchicago.edu/faculty/lott/guns.html>"Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," by John R. Lott, Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and David B. Mustard, graduate student, Department of Economics,Journal of Legal Studies, January 1997.

Making guns less available does not reduce suicide but merely causes the person seeking death to use another means. While gun-related suicides were reduced by Canada's handgun ban of 1976, the overall suicide rate did not go down at all: the gun-related suicides were replaced 100% by an increase in other types of suicide -- mostly jumping off bridges. Source: Rich, Young, Fowler, Wagner, and Black,The American Journal of PsychiatryMarch, 1990

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This Page Last Updated November 28, 1996

Reprinted with permission.

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